Michigan's Lake St. Clair may be, acre for acre, the best warm-water fishery in America: the densest muskie population anywhere, smallmouth flats that win every national ranking, and walleye running the shipping channels. All of it minutes from Detroit.
Reports current for Friday, October 23
Every one of the 26 Michigan waters we cover has a live read this morning. None reaches 4 out of 5 and 3 are slow. Water runs 47 F to 55 F. Pressure is holding steady on most of them, so the day comes down to water temperature and wind.
Best right now: Au Sable River 3/5, Betsie River 3/5, Big Manistee River 3/5
Live verdicts from this morning's reports.
Lake St. Clair: 430 square miles and 11 feet deep on average, which Michigan's EGLE says hosts one of the largest sport fisheries in the world.
The Pere Marquette: a free-flowing Wild and Scenic river from Baldwin to Ludington, with a flies-only, no-kill reach and self-sustaining steelhead and salmon runs.
Michigan's workhorse river: steelhead under Grand Rapids' bridges, salmon at the Sixth Street ladder and walleye down the lower miles.
The Muskegon River below Croton Dam: Michigan DNR stocks it with steelhead, Chinook salmon, walleye, brown and rainbow trout, and lists steelhead fishing from late October through June.
Detroit River: a Great Lakes connecting water whose spring walleye runs Michigan DNR calls world-class.
The UP's biggest inland water: walleye and jumbo perch in tannin-dark timber country, where the ice season is the social calendar.
St. Clair River: a Michigan connecting water with one of the state's few lake sturgeon possession seasons.
Michigan's biggest inland water: a 20,000-acre weed bowl of walleye, pike and the Tip-Up Town winter festival that defines hard-water culture.
Saginaw Bay: Lake Huron's large shallow bay, where Michigan DNR surveys show walleye recovered since the late 2000s and yellow perch still low.
Michigan's southwest steelhead artery: fish ladders through two states, a summer-run bonus and Berrien County's year-round chrome.
Michigan's glass lake: spring-fed Caribbean clarity, lake trout in the deep basins and smelt schools that write the food chain.
Hamlin Lake: a 5,000-acre lake beside Ludington State Park where bluegill, crappie and largemouth bass dominate the catch.
Michigan's steelhead egg source: the Little Manistee weir supplies the state's winter-run strain, and no steelhead are stocked in the river.
Platte River: one of the two streams where Michigan stocked the first Great Lakes coho in 1966, home to the state’s main coho egg-collection weir.
The Betsie in Benzie County: a Lake Michigan tributary with a wild-run Chinook fishery, managed by the DNR around the Homestead Dam lamprey barrier.
The Au Sable below Grayling: nine miles of flies-only, no-kill water from Burton's Landing to Wakeley Bridge, on the river where Trout Unlimited was founded in 1959.
Lake Michigan's Grand Traverse Bay: lake trout, chinook and smallmouth in East and West bays on either side of Old Mission Peninsula.
A long, deep, low-nutrient lake in Antrim County's Chain of Lakes, managed by Michigan DNR as a Type E trout lake with a 50-inch muskellunge minimum.
The Escanaba River: an Upper Peninsula river gauged at Cornell, where Michigan DNR stocks Bay de Noc-strain walleye.
Manistique River: an Upper Peninsula river whose lower 1.7 miles, below the dam in Manistique, tie it to Lake Michigan's salmon and steelhead.
The Ford River: an Upper Peninsula trout stream that Michigan regulates as Type 4 from Northland Truck Trail to Green Bay.
Amber water past Michigan's Upper Falls: the Tahquamenon holds pike, walleye, muskie and smallmouth from Newberry to Whitefish Bay.
The Porcupine Mountains river: the Ontonagon runs steelhead and salmon into Lake Superior’s wild shore.
Little Bay de Noc: the northern arm of Green Bay at Escanaba and Gladstone, where the Michigan DNR stocks, tags and surveys walleye.
Big Manistee River: the tailwater below Tippy Dam, which the Michigan DNR calls one of the finest trout, steelhead and salmon areas in the state.
Lake Charlevoix: a drowned river mouth lake joined to Lake Michigan by Round Lake and the Pine River Channel at Charlevoix.
Species activity across the state's covered waters. Peak of the year: May.
1 = slow, 5 = peak. Current month highlighted.
Seasonal surface curve for this state's dominant water type (estimated).
No state touches more Great Lakes water, and Michigan uses it: St. Clair's muskie-and-smallmouth factory, Erie's walleye share, Superior's lake trout, and salmon runs up the west-coast rivers each fall. Inland, 11,000 lakes cover everything from bluegill ponds to Torch Lake's depths, and the Au Sable's trout water is hallowed ground: the birthplace of Trout Unlimited.
May-June: everything spawns: walleye runs finish, smallmouth flood the flats, inland lakes turn on. Summer: St. Clair hits its stride and the big lakes troll. September-October: king and coho salmon fill the rivers from Manistee to the Pere Marquette. Winter: Michigan is an ice-fishing civilization: Saginaw Bay walleye, Houghton Lake shanty towns, and pike spearing traditions.
Shallow, clear, fertile water carpeted in grass: essentially one giant smallmouth flat, with 4-lb-average tournament bags and 100-fish days for those who drift and cover water.